Department Of Maturity   [1]

I refer to what one friend has described as “that thing you do with money.”   [2]

Moiself has previously, in this space, mentioned doing that thing, which is “fixing” paper currency in order to reflect the way it should be – the way our money was, before amidst the 1950s Here Come the Commies! scare, when a minister talked President Eisenhower into adding In God We Trust to the back of the USA’s various dollar bills.

Wednesday, after receiving change from a purchase, I whipped out a pen and began my usual currency corrective.

 

 

 

 

Only this time, for reasons that still eludes me, I turned the bill over and added a couple of facial hair adornments to our Boy George.  Doing so made me feel forty years younger, I swear.

 

 

 

 

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Department Of What Will It Take?

Stronger than the compassion I feel for the person who accidentally bumps his head into a brick wall is my WTF ?!?!?! mystification regarding, and contempt for, those who continues to beat their heads against a wall and then complain about having a concussion.

 

 

“I don’t get it, why does this keep hurting?”

 

 

Again, and again, and again.  Folks, remaining in an organization which has committed atrocities and crimes, even if you voice your disapproval and intend to work for reform “from the inside the tent,” is acquiescing to – if not abetting – those very offenses.

I refer to the latest grand jury revelation of…

 

A one and a two, all together now:

 

♫  Decades Of Child Sexual Abuse By Priests  ♫     [3]

 

This time, the grand jury report hails from Pennsylvania. The report, resulting from over two years of investigation and compilation, reinforces the impression that the most sophisticated crime syndicate could take a page from the Roman Catholic Church’s playbook when it comes to systematic, systemic and strategic cover-ups of felony behavior.

Drug lords paying off district attorneys and cops pales in comparison to the church’s:

…breathtakingly horrific…scope of sexual abuse of children. (the report) chronicles in detail how the Catholic hierarchy from the diocese to the Vatican worked not only mitigate the church’s legal exposure, but to maintain strategies to “avoid scandal.”
( The grand jury report about Catholic priest abuse in Pennsylvania shows the church is a criminal syndicate, Anthea Butler,
Associate professor of religious studies, University of Pennsylvania)

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday morning I was listening to (the NPR radio show) Here & Now ‘s interview with James Faluszczak, a former Catholic priest.  Faluszczak was himself molested by a priest and was one of the many victims – out of an estimated one thousand in Pennsylvania– who testified to the grand jury about the abuse.

Near the end of the interview, the Here & Now host wondered aloud if Faluszczak still identifies with his church.  Alone in my car, I yelled out the answer I hoped to hear from any sane and sentient being: an indignant, FUCK NO. Instead, I listened in sorrowful – if unsurprised – disgust to the following exchange:

Host: “Are you still a Catholic?”

Faluszczak: Absolutely.

Host: Why?

Faluszczak: “I have a sense that God has a relationship with me, that I have a relationship with Christ, and that is mediated through ritual, and so the rituals of the church are still important to me….

 

 

 

 

Bingo.  This is why such abuse happens and even flourishes: the fact that there are too many people who do not remove their allegiance from that which is corrupt. Such abuse will continue to happen, in one form of another, if people have the credulity to embrace superstition and mythology and allow reality to be “mediated” in any way, but especially “through ritual.”

 

 

 

 

Mr.  Faluszczak….dude.  I’m sorry for what happened to you, and thanks for testifying to the investigation.  [4]  I’ve no doubt think you are a force for good, but by continuing to stay in the church/identify as a Catholic you are in fact an enabler of the very evil you claim to be disgusted by.

You say you “sense” you have a relationship with this Christ, who, according to your Catholic/Christian theology, is your “savior.” Your god/savior did nothing to save – let me pick just one example from the thousands upon thousands of cases worldwide   [5] –  a seven year old girl from the physical and emotional brutality of having one of your god’s mediators rape her while she was hospitalized for a tonsillectomy.   [6]

Such a deity, if it actually existed, deserves to be spat upon instead of having “a relationship with.” 

 

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
(Voltaire)

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Department Of There’s More Than One Way To Abuse A Child

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A great book, as well as a good segue to a slightly less icky topic.

 

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Department Of In God(s) You May Not Trust, But Believe Your Nose

If, when you get dressed in the morning to go for a walk, you sense that your daughter’s otherwise adorable Bengal kitty – which you are caring for while your daughter is doing a six-month post-college internship in a wildlife sanctuary in Arkansas – has peed in your basket of exercise socks, ditch the incredulity, for that is indeed what has happened.

 

 

 

 

What a cute object. I think I’ll piss on it.

 

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

May you have the courage not abet the abominable;
May you neither believe absurdities nor commit atrocities;
May you trust your nose, especially when putting on your socks;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Which, I am told, is going to happen to me any minute now.

[2] And moiself is not the only god-free person who does this. It is an easy form of activism, meant to provoke thought on the issue (or knotted knickers for the Christian Fundies – I’ll settle for either).

[3] Which should be the name of a punk rock band.

[4] And for attempting,as he did for decades, to report his abuse, to his superiors and then fellow priests, only to have his testimony – SURPRISE! – totally ignored. He of course should have gone directly to the police….

[5] There are so many they merit their own Wikipidia page, which lists the scandals per country.

[6] “The depravity of the abuse…I can’t even begin to describe,” Faluszczk said during the interview, when he was asked if the revelations shocked him.